affirmative action -- race or class??

Regarding the dispute over Dean's remarks on affirmative action that came up recently, specifically whether affirmative action should be based on race or class, I heard an interesting quote from Martin Luther King yesterday and found it on the web. Here it is -- any thoughts??

"You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry… Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism… There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism."
Source: Frogmore, S.C. November, 14, 1966. Speech in front of his staff.

edit... here's the link

http://wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King

[Honesthumanbeing]

1. can you give the entire quote without the potentially misleading "..."s?

2. I noticed that too.

I edited above to show the link.
I heard this quote on PRI -- on Marketplace oddly enough. I'm not sure why it has the ellipses in it actually. I didn't hear any ellipses in the quote when I heard it on the radio. The quote here reflects what I heard on the radio. I don't think the ellipses change the meaning. I didn't notice them at first. I'll look around more to see if I can find the speech somewhere else.

[Honesthumanbeing]

3. I'm guessing

That phrases were moved away to add emphasis to the single point that king seems to be advocating democratic socialism. While this isn't necessarily deceptive, I'd really like to see a version of the quote that has everything he said. I did a search also, and no luck; i came across one page that had even removed the "..."--a very dangerous way to corrupt a quote.

4. King advocating

Just remembered something else he said in the clip I heard --
"Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a synthesis that combines the truth of both.
It means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interralated."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Here's a link to that speech --

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/062.html

[iverglas]

5. guessing is such fun

I found what seems to be a slightly more complete quotation:

http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/blackpamphch3king.html

". . . we're treading in very difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with the economic system of our nation . . . It means that something is wrong with capitalism.

It still has an ellipsis ... which could also, of course, just have indicated a pause in oral speech, a period of dead air, as ellipses in transcripts sometimes do. Shall I guess that?

Anyhow, in that version, it looks like King is equating "the economic system of our nation" and "capitalism", and simply said the same thing two ways.

Here's a slightly different one, with no ellipsis, but the same content (with the addition of the word "fundamental" not found elsewhere):

http://www.candw.ag/~jardinea/ffhtm/ff010119.htm

Cone quotes King speaking to the staff of his organisation the Southern Christian Leadership Conference when Mr King said "Now this means that we are treading in very difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is fundamentally wrong with the economic system of our nation. It means that something is wrong with capitalism."

Another bit from that last link:

Writing in Martin and Malcolm Cone wrote: "Martin reflected upon socialism even more seriously when he realised that the black and poor (as well as the white poor, a reality that surprised him) were getting poorer and the white rich, richer, despite the passage of the much celebrated Civil Rights Act and President Johnson’s War on Poverty. King became explicit about the need for economic equality. <Emphasis in the original>. Therefore he argued and declared for an Economic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged" which would guarantee a job or an annual income for all Americans."

And I've reproduced that with the boldface emphasis exactly as it appears in the source I quoted, and with the "<Emphasis in the original>" that appears in that passage (changing the square brackets to pointy brackets for the purpose of this forum's formatting).

So I kinda assume that the quotation of the passage that concerns us is exactly as it appears in that book, since the author of the source I am quoting seems rather particular about that kind of accuracy. But heck, maybe he did leave out an ellipsis, or maybe the author he was quoting was a secondary source and he left out an ellipsis.

The question then is: was Martin quoted accurately in that book?

Well, here ya go:

Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare
James H. Cone
Released: September, 1992
ISBN: 0883448246

Ask yer local library.

A genuine sceptic, it seems to me, makes an effort to find out the truth. After all, the word comes to us from the Latin one meaning "inquiry, doubt".


I dunno. Do we think that King didn't think that there was something wrong with capitalism??

.